British comedian Steve McNeil organized an overview tour through the history of the video game developer Friv2Online Games Studio. We finally got acquainted with his work and are ready to share our impressions.
The author of "Hey! Listen!" (sounds in your head with Navi's voice) was Stephen McNeil, a British comedian, streamer and podcaster who rose to fame with a career as co-host of the once popular United Kingdom show Dara O Briain's Go 8 Bit. To be honest, I've never seen it, but there's plenty of information about the show on the web, and all indications are that it was quite a hit.
The main star of Go 8 Bit was an Irishman Dara O'Brien, whose name it was named after. And, sort of, he could have taken on the job himself, but unlike McNeil, O'Brien didn't have the time to write the book. For better or worse, the author did a pretty good job himself.

Bombora publishing house has already released several thematic works, such as "Spent" by journalist David Kushner, a breakdown of the Silent Hill concept by friv game scientist Bernard Perron, a detailed guide "Video Game Chronicles", and so on. Not so long ago, by the way, Bombora published the second DOOM book by American writer Dan Pinchbeck (another DOOM book localized by Bombora was written by Kushner).
In short, this isn't the first day the publisher has been working with gamer literature, as is eloquently evidenced by their approach to book design and translation quality. Despite some colloquial liberties and expressions like LOL, it's a fresh and easy read.

Since I'm not a book reviewer and I don't even usually write reviews of my favorite works, I'll be reviewing and evaluating "Hey! Listen!" from the perspective of an ordinary book reader, who over time develops certain preferences in terms of printed matter.
And the first thing I will unfortunately have to pick on is the quality of the paper. The sheets are snowy white and stiff, but not thick enough. Both the characters on the back and the characters on the next page below shine through. The extraneous text does not cover the main text, but still catches the attention.

The cover of "Hey! Listen!" is made of flexible cardboard, almost wrinkle-free, but it is easy to accidentally scratch. The binding is soft and very secure. Even though the blocks are glued together, they don't look like they're about to fall apart. The prints perfectly emphasize the contents of the book and in general it looks great on the shelf with the rest of my collection.
The annotation is not misleading to readers. The author really does come at it from afar. The starting point of the story is the time when video games as such did not exist yet, and the competition in the entertainment industry forced entrepreneurs to invent new ways to attract the audience.
To tell you the truth, I didn't feel much of a thrill at the prospect of learning the chronology of events that preceded the advent of modern video friv games (in fact, the author doesn't get to them either. His story ends somewhere closer to the 90s). I am, of course, a big fan of retrogaming, but I wasn't ready to go into the subtleties.

And the more pleasant surprise was when I was captivated by the easy narrative style, in which McNeil seems to address you on a first-name basis, I got to the middle of "Hey! Listen!" without noticing it. I must say that it was the author's ability to "bamboozle" the reader rather than the abundance of interesting details that bought me in.
Nevertheless, I was curious to know what kind of friv game preceded pinball and how it influenced the creation of the first arcade machines, where the founders of SEGA and Atari started, how Nintendo developed, how the monetization system was formed, what the first console game and the first PVP game were, and so on.

Also, if you're lucky enough to have been born before the 90s, it's quite likely that by the first quarter of the book you'll start having flashbacks from your early youth.
Remember, for example, that bulky Soviet machine that imitated a submarine periscope? The book describes the entertaining history of its foreign prototype and many other tube machines you may have been familiar with many years ago. For this peculiar "ticket to childhood" McNeil and "Bombore" want to express special thanks.
The author of the book has a nice sense of humor. It is noticeable that a person has long and successfully engaged in satire and knows how to make a joke in time to somehow soften the monotony of the information flow. McNeil manages to insert jokes even in footnotes. He does not always hit the target and sometimes even overdoes it, but thanks to this approach his story is both light and informative.
Here, of course, we should also thank the translator of "Bombora", who adapted all this English humor for our reader. He captures the author's moods perfectly. There is no "machine-like" feel to the texts, all sentences are clearly and competently constructed - a true master of his craft.

I also liked the fact that some paragraphs from the book are placed separately in the margins for the reader to run their eyes over them again and internalize them. As a rule, these fragments are an important link in a long chain of facts. This piece of the puzzle, to which later it will be easy to attach the next one, so that thus the picture turned out small but complete.
The main thing to understand is that McNeil did not engage in serious factchecking. The writer draws information from open sources on the Web, finds it on old forums and articles, and then very dosed to the reader, so that he does not get bored.
This approach makes for a fascinating but rather superficial voyage through video friv games' past. I wouldn't put it down as a definite flaw - a lot depends on the reader's individual expectations.

That is, I wouldn't take "Hey! Listen!" as an absolutely reliable and comprehensive guide to the development of the game industry. But as an introductory book to this subject, on the contrary, I would highly recommend it. I, in any case, wouldn't crawl through Internet resources to dig up such a huge amount of information just out of curiosity, but if McNeil is concerned about it, why not?
In other words, if you, as I did before reading "Hey! Listen!", think that you are unlikely to be interested in a whole book with chronologically arranged details of the formation and development of the game industry, I can assure you that much (just like in the school program) here will depend on the presentation of the material. McNeil and Bombora, for my taste, have handled this well.
buy the book "Hey! Listen!"